DRAMATIC ACTION
DRAMATIC ACTION ACTION- KNOWLEDGE OF THE EFFECT- EMPTY PAUSE – DRAMATIC PAUSE-STORY KEPT MOVINa- BUSINESS- REALISM- STAGE-DIRECTIONS Action. "Action," as the word is used in the theater, may have one or both of two meanings. In its ordinary sense it simply means movement, something happening. Dramatically, it means the whole course of events, or in a lesser degree, all that makes up a situation, from the mental undercurrent to the grouping of the figures. Since it is correctly used with both these meanings, and since no other word entirely fills its place, I have used it in both ways ; I think the context will usually make clear which meaning you are to understand. A manager may say to a writer : "There's no action in your play." He means that nothing happens which is of real interest or importance, though the writer may feel he has provided plenty of " action " by keeping his people in constant motion. Dramatic action need not mean physical motion at all. It is the "getting somewhere" with your story, the unraveling of your plot, which constitutes action as understood by dramatists. The method depends on the effect you desire to produce. Always mental, the appeal may be entirely intellectual, or inspiring ; or it may affect the mentality along its more primitive side, by horror, by curiosity, by laughter. Walter Pritchard Eaton says that "the sight of a man whose mere life is at stake at the point of a pistol is infinitely less interesting, dramatic, important, than the sight of a man whose soul is at stake at the point of another's ideas and inspiration." Knowledge of effect. Lack of knowledge of what you desire the effect on your audience to be is one cause of failure in writing. The function of the drama is always entertainment in some form, whether by laughter or a good mental stir-up. Beyond hoping that they will like it, be sure you know what you want your audiences to think and feel. This knowledge and the desire to produce the effect will help you mightily in the presentation of action and the writing of dialogue. No matter what your point of view, you must remember that the audience has one also and it may not be yours. You must, therefore, wantto produce your effect ; merely knowing what it should be will not do it. An earnest ritualist of an orthodox established church did not take into his calculations the point of view of those outside the fold of his own sect and in all sincerity wrote into his play a line which to him was worthy of all reverence and solemnity—and a cosmopolitan, irreverent city found the line screamingly funny. The dramatist's desireto produce his calculated effect was not great enough to make him step outside his own opinion and take into account the audience's sympathy and understanding. Empty pause. A frequent blunder in the " action " of the novice's play is what we may call the empty pause. It usually occurs in this way : "Sara leaves the room ; in a few minutes she returns with a book." Those "few minutes" of unprovided action and speech for the people left on the stage ! And they occur again and again—pauses which would make seemingly interminable stage-waits. Do not misunderstand me; I have no reference to the dramatic pause, as necessary in play-writing as in music. But pauses such as I have mentioned, occurring at times in the play when the interest should be kept up, the action moving, are only stupid blunders on the part of the writer. Take the example given: the "few minutes" while Sara is off-stage. This interval must be filled. How? Is the book important? Or is it only necessary that she be out of the way? If the former, then she is going to get the book to show someone she has left on the stage. Unless there is some such reason, you have no right to emphasize her going for a book, but would havethe book present on the scene. The person or persons on the stage must be given some piece of business depending entirely upon the reason she went. They may be bored, or impatient, or eager to see the book. They will probably speak several lines on the subject. If, on the other hand, her reason for leaving is because the dramatist wants her out of the way, then the reason he got her off-stage must be shown during her absence, by the actions or speeches of those left, or by the entrance or exit of whichever character he wishes to have take advantage of her being gone. No empty moments or pauses are permitted on the stage; those that do find place are such as are themselves part of the action—a character's inability to speak under strong emotion, or a pause of expectancy at some crucial moment. Dramatic pause. A dramatic pause is one of suspense, interest ; sometimes the stage is quite empty, or, if peopled, the actors, too, are waiting, breathless. There may be but one person present, and that one may be apparently either dead or fainted. InTess of the D'Urbervilles, Tess picks up the carving-knife, and exits into the room where the audience knows Alec is supposed to lie in drunken slumber. Thestage is empty, the silence pregnant, as the auditors picture to themselves the scene in that room. Tess returns, the bloody knife in her hand. How long that pause has been no one stops to consider. It is more dramatic, under the circumstances, than the acted scene could possibly be. On the other hand, a needlessly empty stage, or actors left by a careless author with nothing to do or say, while someone goes out and does some unimportant thing, and returns, is simply bad play- writing. Such matters may seem trifles to the beginner ; yet it is in just such matters as these that the novice shows his hand. The ability to tie up all the loose ends shows experience. Story kept moving. Many novices seem to take as a motto for their work the slogan: "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way ! " To amble gently along may serve in a certain kind of novel; do not try it in a play. No matter how attractive they may be, a lot of characters wandering in and out, talking, talking—clever talk, too, sometimes— will not make a play. The story must be kept moving, with as little interruption as possible, on to the end. There must be interest, entertainment. Even if two or three people are quietly talking, with even an appearance of aimlessness, it all has definite bearing on the matter in hand. So many people seem to think that action means a murder every minute, or the heroine's fainting every third speech. Action, indeed ; but it is not dramatic, unless it means something, and it will not make a play. Making drama. Nor will emotional scenes or big situations, by themselves, make drama. Like every other part in the structure, they must lead somewhere, have dramatic value, belong to the action. It is not at all dramatic for you to drop your pencil. But, if you do so because you have been startled or some sudden thought has crossed your mind, the act immediately becomes important. When Angel Clare, in Ten of the D'Urbervilles, remarks to Tess on their wedding-day that it is strange he has never before seen her handwriting, she knows for the first time that the letter she had written to him which would probably have prevented their marriage has never reached him: that while she has been sure he has married her, knowing all, he has really been in ignorance and her confession is still to be made. Mrs. Fiske used to make her audiences fairly jump by suddenly dropping her pen with a clatter against a plate. And a simple speech, an ordinary act, became big with drama. Business. When the action becomes the "business," we have the more popular meaning of the word—what the actors do as distinguished from what they say. Realism overdone. There is a tendency with some writers to carry stage-business to a degree of realism that is not only revolting but unnecessary. Of course, the fault may lie with an actor deficient in taste, or with a stage-director. But the author can be specific enough in his directions to see that no opportunity is given for overdoing. For instance, I have seen death-scenes portrayed on the stage which passed beyond the point of dramatic effect and became only a harrowing or pathological episode which one wished finished. In one of the many versions of Oliver Twist prepared for the stage is one in which the death of Nancy is so bloody, so long drawn out, so terrible, that people simply shut their eyes, and in some instances leave the theater. In an old play called The Soudan was another death-scene, a soldier begging for water, that stays in memory as a situation to keep one away from the play, blotting out all other excellences. The fault in this latter case probably lay in the vanity of the actor. Here again the effect you desire to produce must be your guide; you wish to thrill, to harrow, but not to drive your audience away feeling they will never come again. Stage-directions. As a rule, I find it unsafe for the novice in the theater to fill his play with too many descriptions or suggestions for stage-business. In this direction more than any other he is apt to do the things he should not. It is best, until greater knowledge of actors and acting is acquired, not to tell them in a first-play manuscript what to do to any large extent. The movements, et cetera, necessary to the telling of the story will find place as a natural consequence of your writing. These it is safe and right to use. But as I said in the matter of scenario descriptions, the more exact and effective movements had better be intrusted to the stage- director. To show you just where the difficulty lies, a few examples will illustrate actual errors of novices in the endeavor to combine " business " and dialogue without any real knowledge of the stage. One very popular mistake is the sending of a character off the stage for a specific purpose and allowing him to return too soon to have discharged his errand. If it is not desired to allow the passage of the actual moments required, the time should be suggested by sufficient dialogue and movement during his absence to give the impression that some time has passed. In one play a man was sent off the stage with instructions from another character to go to a shop at the next corner, telephone from there, ask certain questions, one or two of which required detailed answers, and return with these answers. The celerity with which all these things were accomplished smacked of magic. Half a dozen sentences bridged the gap ; actually, he would hardly have reached the door of the house on his outward trip, before he was back, his errand satisfactorily completed. In another play, a maid was ordered to telephone for a case of champagne; in about thirty seconds, she appeared in the door to announce: "The champagne is in the icebox." Gestures. The advice to the novice against too detailed business is especially true when dealing with a scene of very intense emotion. On these occasions the actor is better left to himself and the stage- director. A forced gesture or movement as suggested by an amateur will not have the dramatic effect of a more spontaneous action from a trained player. In a very promising one-act play, read a little while ago, the writer had suggested for his heroine, in a moment of tense inward struggle, a gesture—carefully described in detail—which was so extravagant, so bizarre, so difficult, that people would have said, "How did she do that?" instead of thinking of the feeling causing it. In addition the actress playing the part would have stood in danger of blood- poisoning or lockjaw at every performance! In some way the writer had pictured this gesture—it was so graphically described that his mental image of it must have been clear—as something very striking and dramatic. The technical, or even the merely natural, side had not occurred to him.